And then there's the way Ed Carpenter Racing is trying to do it this year.

One car. Two drivers. Small team.

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Hey, it works, too.

Team owner Ed Carpenter and driver Mike Conway are sharing the ride this season in the Fuzzy's Ultra Premium Vodka Chevrolet. The unlikely pair -- Carpenter is from Indianapolis and Conway was born in England -- has Carpenter driving the ovals on the schedule and Conway behind the wheel on the road and street courses, where he'll be this week as the series makes its annual visit to Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course for the 15th race on the schedule.

Carpenter has a win at Texas Motor Speedway in June and won the pole for the Indianapolis 500 in May for the second straight year. He was running near the front and looking strong for a possible win when James Hinchcliffe took him out with a late crash.

Conway earned his second victory of 2014 when he won the second race of the Toronto doubleheader July 20. He won at Long Beach in April.

Put them together -- Med Carpenway, let's say -- and they'd firmly reside in the seventh spot in the driver point standings for the season, right there among the guys from the Penske, Andretti and Ganassi power teams.

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"When we made this plan to split the driving chores with myself and Mike, we had hoped we could be contending at every race," Carpenter said in a news release. "We thought with a solid road course driver and an oval specialist that the Fuzzy's Vodka Chevy could be in the hunt for each of the 18 races this year. Now to win three events makes this season very special."

The Carpenter team is the first other than Ganassi, Penski and Andretti to have three victories in a season since 2004.

Conway will have a chance to add to the win total this weekend on the rolling 2.25-mile, 13-turn circuit at Mid-Ohio. Conway also will drive Aug. 24 at Sonoma and Carpenter will compete at Milwaukee on Aug. 17 and the final race of the season Aug. 30 at Auto Club Speedway in California, where he won in 2012 and was second last year.

"I was really happy with the result on the last race on a street course for the year and we'll get cracking for the last two (road course) races with this test day," said Conway, who was at Mid-Ohio last week with 20 other drivers. "It's crazy to think we only have four races left in the season, two for me and two for Ed. It's gone by fast."

Conway, who decided two years ago he wanted to compete only on road and street circuits after another bad accident at Indianapolis, last raced at Mid-Ohio in 2012 when he finished 21st. The testing day was time to get familiar with the course once again in a setting more conducive to finding out about the car than race weekend provides.

"The last time we had a test on a road course was Barber in spring, so this is a time when we can really try loads of different things that we don't get the time to do on race weekends," Conway said. "We can take our time going through the changes and get it dialed in for the race weekend.

"It's really important to try different things you don't get time to do on race weekend. Get the car moving forward and developing."

With a chance to compete with Carpenter again next season, Conway said he's looking forward to being back in the IndyCar series in 2015.

"I've really enjoyed my time with Ed and after I finish my sports car program hopefully we can figure out how we'll continue together for next year," he said. "It's been only positives for me. (Competing on road/street races this year) was what I wanted to do and I'm thankful to Ed for giving me the chance to do that. It's been a good year, and I think next year we could definitely come out strong and have an even better year. And we're still pushing this year."